


this is exactly how I pictured I would die!

by dontstraytoofar



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Ew, F/F, Fluff, idiots who fight ghosts and flirt alot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-24 00:05:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7485168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dontstraytoofar/pseuds/dontstraytoofar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holtz, if you asked what her favourite thing in the world was when she was 19, she’d probably say peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches and her particle destabilizer she made when she was 12.</p><p>She’s 32, and if you asked her now it starts with sandwiches with the crust cut off and ends with Erin Gilbert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is exactly how I pictured I would die!

**Author's Note:**

> first thing: spoilers ahead! because, well. duh? (title from dialogue of movie)
> 
> second: kate mckinnon i bless you for your gay input into this movie. sapphics everywhere praise you. 
> 
> as always, nothing belongs to me I’m just a gay girl loving gay ships. enjoy! xx comments are very (very) welcome.

 

 

 “Wooow” 

Erin sometimes wonders why she took the job. 

(Short answer: Abby

Long answer? Mid life crisis and boredom)

Because here she is, loose fitting overalls topped as a  _uniform_ with Holtz _Mcbolts_  over here folding her arms and moving her appreciative walk around Erin so she stands at the front of the other woman, being met by a blank stare and eyebrow raised. 

 “See! The logo is perfect. Suit looks like a dumpster uniform  _but_ that’s what the stripes are for”

Erin looks down at herself, and can barely contain a pout. “Holtz, we look like downgraded versions of the power rangers” She sees Holtz’ scrunched up face and her less than hurt expression and winces. “No offence. But really?  _Overalls?”_

Holtz winks, and flashes Erin a lazy smirk, tossing her arm over Erin’s shoulders bringing her in closer to her head. “Gilbert, you naive, floundering fish in a sea of geniuses-”

 “What-”

 “It’s all about character!” Erin watches her pick up a wrench, blowing a bubble of gum as it pops, making Erin blink at her eccentric ticks. “And we’re  _ghostbusters._ Why can’t the ladies have some fun?” And she swings the wrench once around her finger, watching it smack against her goggles skewing them, making Holtz wince. 

 “Ow”

Erin finds it strangely….adorable?

Erin kinda watches her, watches how in the background Patty hunches over a map of New York and Abby kicks a malfunctioning prototype muttering “ _shitfucker”_ under her breath and Kevin tries to use the pencil sharpener as a carrot peeler again. And she realises she has her own little (messed up) family. 

Holtz ducks her head slightly, and grins with her dimples. “You alive there soldier?”

Erin can kid herself, but the other womans smile is _i_ _nfectious._

And she stares a moment, at Holtz’ eyes and her dimples and the way this uniform shouldn’t look flattering on  _anyone_ but somehow looks good on her. 

But then Kevin runs in yelling about how the “fishes” ate the phone again and Erin’s brought out of her haze.

They get drunk off cheap wine the next week, and Erin waves the  _cylinder ghost catcher thingy_  above her head like a trophy she’s fought for for years. 

 

 

It’s when they get called garbage ladies does Erin lose her cool. Granted, what sexist prick would demand to see a real ghost? One at that, he’s previously fought against? If you ask her, Erin would say it’s the human inability to believe the unthinkable. And for  _some_ reason, write off all woman as in a state of hysteria. Yes, even in the good ol years of 2016. 

It’s Abby (of course) who chills her. 

 “Do you even know what will happen if we open it? We don’t have a containment area to hold it in” Abby sighs, and Erin feels kinda bad for raging like she has. “Erin come on, let’s be smart”

And she breathes in, cools her bones, and watches how in the corner of her eye Holtz looks like she’s about to faint. She frowns at that, yet saves it for another day, and breathes out: “Yeah yeah. Sorry, you’re right. I’m a hundred percent cool and-”

She hears Patty’s exasperated “Oh my  _god”_  behind her but doesn’t have it in her to care. 

She presses the pedal down, like it’s every person that told her she couldn't succeed, and all hell breaks loose. 

 

 

It’s when they’re picking stray bits of glass out of their hair from the exploding window does Holtz seem like she’s calmed down. She plonks herself down behind her desk of trinkets, fumbling with a wristwatch like gun, and Erin wheels over on an office chair. Wincing as glass cracks under the wheels. “Hey”

Holtz perks up, her glasses falling to the tip of her nose forcing her to push them up. And Erin curses how easily dorky the other woman can be. And she laughs as she brushes glass of Holtz’ shoulder. “You okay?”

Holtzmann shrugs, running her hand through her hair with her dimples showing in a crooked smile. But Erin, even only knowing her for a few weeks, can tell it’s not a proper Holtzmann grin. “You can talk about it you know, you seemed pretty shell shocked when-”

 “Huh” Holtz’ sudden interest with the wall makes Erin frown, opening her mouth to continue while looking to Holtz with a perplexed expression. But the other woman beats her to it, and stands up abruptly. 

 “Since when did the grenades go next to the compressional bi-passer? Kevin, have you been messing with my stuff again?”

They don’t  _own_ a compressional bi-passer, but Erin smiles softly like she knows, and even though she’s still angry at being written off by random people she doesn’t know, she  _kinda_ knows Holtz. And making up some scientific name for a particle gun seems like Holtz’ second nature of " _talking about feelings is bad and awkward”_ rearing its head. So Erin doesn’t blame her social awkwardness, and instead walks over to Holtz and helps her find a gun that doesn’t (and can’t) exist. Even if it tried. 

  


 

“Hey Gilbert?”

Erin turns, glasses foggy from the hot water in a barrel that she doses her freshly painted gun in, and hums a “Yeah?” as she carefully extracts it out with tongs. She hears rather than sees Holtz’ footsteps as the gun steams in her hand.

 “D-don’t, don’t” Holtz struggles with her sentence, shakes her head, and starts again as Erin waits patiently as more mist fogs her glasses. Holtz twists a wrench in her hands and licks her lips.

 “Don’t do that again. Y-y-you could have m-miss stepped, and sent your body flying out a window with a class three ghost and impale yourself on a telegraph pole at a high velocity only equating in a painful death”

Erin sucks in her top and bottom lip and smiles with two thumbs up, and Holtz drops her wrench and flashes back a grin folding her arms across her chest like the whole conversation drained her. Erin guesses it’s her way of showing she cares, and thinks she sees a slight blush to Holtz’ cheeks as she sits back down and pulls the chair in closer to the desk. 

(That and it could also be the foggy mist on her glasses obscuring her vision. But Erin likes the blushing theory better)

 

 

 

Fun fact she didn’t  _apparently_ know about Holtzmann.

She  _loves_ dancing. 

And as Erin laughs and watches her throw an imaginary lasso around her waist and pull her in, she has to say, Holtz isn’t half bad. 

 “Come on Erin! Ya gotta feel the beat, otherwise the beat won’t feel you!”

And the song that’s playing is cheesily 80’s and Kevin knows  _also_ how to feel the beat. Abby and Patty can do a mean moonwalk, and as Abby spins her in a circle like it’s an awkward prom date they both laugh. And Patty laughs and Kevin laughs but it’s Holtzmann's’ full blown laughter that has Erin’s eyes shining at.

Because the girl looks like she finally found home. 

And maybe Erin has too. 

  


 

 

Chinese takeout is (obviously) a go to in their laboratory. And Holtz takes full advantage as she lists off everyone’s orders through the phone. 

 “Aaaaand a full roasted duck.” Holtz hums, and Erin laughs from the couch near the window as she can practically guess the 17 year old worker on the other end having an aneurysm at Holtz’ teasing. She flips a page of her science magazine, and listens with a smirk. 

 “Hmm! A full duck. And don’t skimp on the wings. Gotta get that protein my amigo” And she hangs up without another word, Erin shaking her head from the other side of the room. 

 “Holtzmann, did you even give him the address, you know, to get it here?”

Holtz flicks her welder on and off, the flame flickering as she spins in her chair. “Nope. Cause that leads to, obviously, them asking my name and no no no  _no_ ”

Erin frowns, and stops reading abruptly. “Oh my god”

Holtz frowns, and stares with a raised eyebrow as the other woman jumps up from her sitting position and walks quickly over to Holtzmann, saying again. “ _Oh_ my god” And Holtz leans back in her chair, increasingly disturbed by Erin's’ behaviour.

 “What?”

And Erin smacks her forehead like some tiny alien is living inside her brain. “Of course! Why haven’t I asked you this before? Do you have a first name, or is it like, some cool hard exterior edgy thing you have where your first name is a mystery because sure Holtzmann is suave and sexy but-”

And Erin sees that panic stare Holtz does, like the day she released the ghost into the open air, and she decides to let her voice trail off as she calms down. She has a tendency to ramble sometimes. But Holtz just sits there, twitches her lips to a reassuring smile that seems so  _fake_  it could split her skin, and Erin feels like the  _worst_ person. 

 “It’s uh, i-it’s Jillian. Like Jack and Jill except with  _-illian_  on the e-end you know?” And she is acting like that night when they toasted glasses, rigid and nervous and shutting down as she tries to laugh but it just makes Erin wince. And Holtz notices, stands up abruptly and says something about that  _goddamn_  compressional bi-passer as she fumbles for her glasses falling down her nose. 

Erin still finds its adorable, and says “I’m sorry” into the open air like Holtzmann could hear every word. 

 

 

 

“You have these sad cow eyes that follow me everywhere now”

Erin starts from the voice behind her, dropping the papers she was bent over as Holtz’ chin comes to a rest on her shoulder from behind.  Erin calms her racing heart at the jump as the other woman grins like so many times before.  

 _(No,_  she tells herself as her heart slows, _not because of Holtzmann’s proximity)_

But Erin knows (and maybe Holtz does too) that her jitteriness isn’t from the scare. “Shoot. You scared me. Hi”

 “Whatcha got there?”

Erin smiles, excited to share her work, as Holtz jumps on the table in front of her, swinging her legs. She skews some of Erin’s paper making her roll her eyes, but she’s already on a tangent about physics and the reason behind ghosts being able to fly and Holtz kinda forgets the reason she was here in the first place. 

_Something to do with raisins? Sultanas? Grapes?_

 “-maybe that’s why they can levitate? It would also explain why evil Kevin could Peter Pan fly over our heads and scare the shit out of us and-”

_Oh right. Date!_

 “Do you like dates?”

The jarring question makes Erin stop suddenly, chuckling as she looks up to Holtz still swinging her legs and lost in thought. “Uh sure? Depends on the season. I mean some are gross and taste like literal road kill but other than that they’re alright?” Erin shakes her head with a hidden smile, and gathers her notes. “Why the sudden interest in fruit?”

Holtz frowns, and looks down to Erin seeing how the sparkle in her eye is still there after talking about her passion. Looks at how Erin’s tiny bone on her wrist moves as she gathers up stray pens, watches how her collarbone and lips seem to smile when she leans over the desk for something out of reach. 

Holtzmann shrugs, swinging her legs once more as her boots clunk against the desk. “Dunno. Thought dinner and a movie might work, but if you’re  _that_ enthusiastic about a prune then-”  
  
Holtz’ nails tap at the desk as Erin lets an “Oh” out as it dawns on her. 

And she gestures to the air between them both, clearing her throat. “You meant a  _date_ date. Like, you and me?”

Holtz does that grin (with the dimples and the smooth wink) and yeah, Erin thinks. A date wouldn’t be so bad. 

 

 

 

It wouldn’t _be so bad_  if it wasn’t interrupted by giant clowns, decapitated war veterans and one angry widow who wails and keeps the entire 3rd street up at night. Someone, Erin thinks, forgot to mention that while yes, the portal had been closed, the job isn’t over. And people will always need the ghostbusters.

So she’s slipping heels on, and in the other room Holtz is probably tying her shoes while jumping around the room looking for her blazer with her tongue out, when Kevin walks in mumbling around a half eaten sandwich addressing both ladies. At his voice, both their heads simultaneously pop out from their respective rooms. 

“Lady downtown heard screaming coming from her basement? Something about goats I think” 

And while Holtzmann rolls her eyes at Kevin, tossing her goggles over her (once) neater styled hair, Erin widens her eyes and hops to finish putting on her missing heel. Holtz smiles when she sees Erin, and she’s nearly thirty and she’s  _blushing_ from the wink Holtzmann sends her. 

“Come here often hot stuff?”

Erin nudges her shoulder with hers and fixes her earrings. “Shut up Jillian.”

It’s so natural that Holtz doesn’t even start from the name, she just grins, and Erin realises her slip as she widens her eyes. But they both either choose to ignore it, or maybe the way Erin says it makes it hurt less. Sure they didn’t get to go out to the fancy Indian place down the road, or go for a late night walk under the stars. But when Holtz looks back on it, she couldn’t find a better way to spend their first date. Watching Erin covered in green goo throw her the ‘rock and roll’ sign as she decapitates a ghost? 

Best. First. Date. Ever.

 


End file.
